Homegrown Melodic Rock doesn’t get a lot better than this. A month ago I’d never heard of Adelaide’s Sonic Divide who have just released their second album ‘The Other Side’. Today I’m a firm fan. We caught up with the band to find out how they formed and what prompted them to release a second album so long after the first.
Mark: Hi guys- first things first I love the album, it sounds great. I’ve been living with it for a couple of weeks now and like all good albums I get more with each listen. The thing of course about writing reviews is once you commit the review to the page and you’re still listening to the record you almost always wish you could change it so I never do! So apologies for the Nickelback comparison on that first track!
Steve: (laughs) we weren’t offended at all!
Mark: When you listen to a lot of music like I do it’s always refreshing and quite rare to find a band that manages to combine a lot of varying influences and sounds and make them work well together. We’ve got a lot of great music in Australia, a lot of great Melodic Rock and that’s what The Rockpit wants to spread the word about. I love the way that you manage to sound remarkably modern and yet you have that wonderful AOR thing going on too. I’ve never really heard it done this well before.
Wayne/Band: Thank you.
Mark: I guess my first real question is, after talking to a few people about the band and trying to track down the first record I’m told that it’s almost as good if not better to the latest release by someone who loved that first album, but there are quite a few years between releases. So I have to ask ‘why so long between drinks’? 7 years is a long time.
Wayne: I do think the new one is quite different from the previous one, we took a different direction I think with the song-writing and how we applied it. The first album was fantastic but we thought that it was probably a little bit dated, probably even before it was released from a sound point of view. The new album deliberately aimed for a more modern kind of sound, but same type of music, same guys playing so you’re still going to get that feel. But you’re going to get a mix of the influences that come from the six of us guys, and let’s face it we’re all children of the 80’s so we can’t hide that.
Mark: So let’s get a recap in three parts – how did you get together, what happened between the two releases and what made you want to come back and put together the new album?
Glenn: Years ago in the 80’s I met Wayne. I knew he was a singer and I was in a band called ‘Disciple’ with my brother and we were gonna get Wayne to audition for us and I don’t know why it never happened but it never did. And Wayne ended up joining different bands and I didn’t see him for ten years or so or something ridiculous. And I was playing guitar one day, in church actually, and I saw Wayne sitting out there and thought “Hey he looks like that dude” and I couldn’t remember his name, but we ended up chatting and then he started talking about that maybe we should get together and jam, and I think he’d already spoken to Andy?
Wayne: I think at that point the Church that we were going to I was good friends with the guy that was running the music team and he was talking about opening the place up to musos that wanted to use the space during the week and I thought “I could organise that” so I grabbed Glenn and grabbed Andy and one or two others, I think we grabbed Ian as well our bass player and I think we had one of two others come along. And we had another fellow come along after a couple of weeks to play drums for us, but really that’s where it all started. We were just intending to throw some covers together and just have a bit of a jam and a good time there was no intention whatsoever for this to evolve into what it’s become. I guess a lot of us were in a similar situation at the time with regards family and work, our kids were at a stage where I guess we could be ‘released’ from the family (laughs) for at least one night a fortnight, and getting together just to throw some tunes together. And I think after probably a couple of months Glenn threw something at us that he’d been working on in the later days with one of his other bands and we thought “this is interesting, sounds pretty good” It was an original, so we thought here we go again it’s like the old days, and we started working on some original tunes, and bang! Here we are!
Glenn: We were just playing Dream Theater songs and stuff at that stage.
Mark: So how long from that point did it take to put together the first album?
Glenn: that was probably five years in the making really because we spent the first two years just jamming covers and mucking around, and then we spent another two or three years writing and we’d record the songs probably on my laptop or something at the time. Along the way we had lots of songs that were OK but never made the cut as far as making it on an album and I think we kept lifting out own bar until we felt the songs were good enough to actually be recorded in a studio.
Steve: And that’s one of the more interesting things about the way that we work as a group. Certainly on the latest album one of the things you hear that makes it sound different is there are so many song-writers who contributed to the material. But the one thing that I’ve noticed about the band is that an idea that comes into the band in terms of “Hey I’ve had this idea for a song here’s how it goes…” versus what actually comes out of the sausage machine after the whole band has collaborated are two very, very different things. That’s one of the things I really love about it because I’ve brought some really crappy ideas to the band (laughs) and then the guys get a hold of it and after we’ve done this, this, this, this and this to it (laughs) it’s turned into some of the best gear we’ve actually done! So it’s a real collaboration in the way stuff gets written and I love that way of working together.
Mark: Well it certainly seems to work. Take the first song (‘Vicinity’) – I listen to it and think ‘Nickelback’ and there’s nothing wrong with a bit of modern commercial Rock, but then the rest of the album has nothing like that, I felt like a fool by the end of the review but I also felt I had to keep that in there too as that was my first impression.
Steve: Thank God! (laughs)
Mark: And for that reason I thought that was an odd song to lead with – whose fault is that? Who put that one first?
Glenn: That song is probably one of the oldest songs that is on the album, maybe the oldest and one that was probably born not that long after we did the first album. We did it live lots of times and basically it became an old song by the time we finally got to recording last year. Why it was the first song I don’t know, I think Andy might be able to say something about that?
Andy: Well Sean the Producer and I were talking about song order and stuff like that when we were in the studio and when we came up with that intro part and the big crunchy riff – we thought it was a good way to kick off the album, that ‘Bam!’ and then a wall of sound. I think that was one of the big factors behind why that was the opener.
Mark: Makes sense – a bit of crunch to start off with. I love the 80’s stuff on the album and the mix is lovely but you’ve pulled off something not a lot of modern bands do in that the album does sound like it’s been recorded in the last ten years. A wonderful combination of familiar sounds with a sympathetic modern production. Do you listen to a mix of old and new music?
Glenn: Well I grew up listening to Van Halen, Kiss, Iron Maiden and that sort of stuff, so that’s where the 80’s comes from and obviously Wayne would have listened to those sort of bands as well but the when we did our first album I think the producer Darren Mullen, he could hear those ‘retro’ things in there and he kind of amplified them and got us to sing heaps of harmonies and get that really retro sound going and that’s probably why people would love that more than the new album as it clearly was more 80’s sounding. But in terms of what we’re listening to, and Steve for example would be listening to a lot more modern stuff than the references I just gave, but pretty much all of us are into Alter Bridge. We listened to them a lot between albums so I think that got into our system as well, and the 80’s are still there as they’re part of us. But we kinda had the conversation with Sean when he produced this album that we wanted it to sound more modern so that we could tune down a semitone, and instead of drop D its C# which just sounds fatter and more modern.
Mark: So what were your plans before the world fell apart? The timing of a comeback album for March 31st 2020 was like the perfect storm?
Steve: When we were gearing up to release it everything was looking great (laughs) it was going to be a fantastic time to release it.
Andy: We kind of had it finished last year then talking to everyone about singles to gain a bit of momentum we figured that late March was the time for the album, but who could have foreseen what was going to happen! I guess the good thing is whilst you’re in lock-down here’s some great new music to listen to!
Mark: Exactly! With an album with so many song-writers there’s a lot going on there, we’ve heard who you were listening to back in the day, but who would you say are your biggest influences as musicians and writers?
Glenn: I would say Van Halen would be my main inspiration, but I also like John Mayer which is something completely different, but I also like ‘Pop’ music and more modern stuff.
Wayne: I think for me it’s a combination of Dream Theater, Alter Bridge and going back to the 80’s even bands like Stryper, Bon Jovi and all those bands with big vocal harmonies – like Kings X and Galactic Cowboys – those kind of bands.
Glenn: Wayne is the main writer of top line vocal melodies, and even for the songs on the album that Wayne didn’t write, we would write the music, but Wayne would still come up with the top line as well as lyrics in some cases. There are exceptions and “When It Bleeds” and “Hero” are examples of songs that were completely written by other band members, but in general, most of the top line melodies are Wayne’s work.
Mark: Nice to hear someone mention Galactic Cowboys too.
Steve: Now here’s where I’m going to show my true hypocrisy because when I wrote ‘Hero’ I wrote it off the back of a Nickelback song I was listening to! (laughs) and that is the God’s honest truth but I can concede I am a closet Nickelback fan, but I think the biggest influence on my song-writing is probably U2. I’ve been a U2 fan for most of my life and I love across their duration how many different styles of music they’ve explored. So I love the notion that you don’t have to be boxed in to a particular style. So on the album you’ve got everything from Blues on ‘Roll the Dice’ to ‘Hero’ which is a lot harder, to really chunky ballads, and on ‘When It Bleeds’ I hear Metallica on the back end of it, it’s a lovely eclectic mix of styles that I think works. But for me its U2 I always come back to, I pick up a guitar and I find myself trying something The Edge might do – and that’s where it comes from.
Mark: So the million dollar question – when are we going to be able to see you play this live?
Steve: We’d like to know! (laughs)
Andy: Not just yet but as things lift we’ll see. We’re hanging to get back out there because from about June 2018 we were gigging once a month at least without fail and that was great. We were doing originals and covers that we thought we could do in the Sonic Divide style and getting a really good response which was great. And that funded the album, but who knows when we’ll get back. We were planning a launch in June but that went on the back-burner so tentatively I guess we’re looking at September if it allows. That’s the plan at least. We rehearsed last night for the first time in a while and it sounded great. It was a lot of fun.
Mark: OK now for some fun. Coronavirus has ended and you get to invite three musicians out to your favourite restaurant to celebrate and talk music, just to make it more interesting you can invite living or dead musicians… Who gets a seat at the table?
Evan: Freddie Mercury, Stewart Copeland and probably Eddie Van Halen…
Glenn: He’ll be sat at my table you can’t have him! (laughs)
Mark: Eddie gets two feeds then!
Everyone: (laughs)
Mark: If you could have been a fly on the wall for the creation of any great Rock album just to see how the magic happened in the studio what would you like to have been there for?
Evan: That’s an interesting question… I would probably go with something like ‘A Night at the Opera.’ I’d definitely pick something from the 70’s and then probably something by Queen.
Mark: And the easy question to finish with, and our traditional closer is: ‘What is the meaning of life?’
Everyone: (laughs)
Evan: 42!
Everyone: (laughs)
Mark: One of our most popular answers 42, it shows you’ve been reading some good books. Before we go through let’s go back to the album, let’s talk about a couple of my highlights – I’d love to hear more about ‘Hero’ and ‘Stay’ before we hang up.
Steve: I guess I should probably start on ‘Hero’ because I wrote it. I wrote ‘Hero’ after a weekend of just being completely and utterly pissed off with the news. I guess it was a combination of things. I was watching the illustrious Mr. Trump just pondering how somebody puts a guy like that in power. And I’m watching stuff on climate change, children in detention, I’m just watching a variety of things that are just flashing through the news and I just sort of thought to myself “Where the hell are we going and how have we found ourselves in this really weird place?” And I thought to myself: how are these people leading us? How are these people speaking for us? All these people are guiding the direction the planet is going in and I’m just thinking “But it’s going to hell in a hand basket.” So it’s a protest song and it was just to vent my frustration at not liking what I was seeing and just wishing that there was a true rise of leadership that spoke for all of humanity not just bits of it. So there you have it.
Mark: And ‘Stay’?
Wayne: ‘Stay’ was my little baby. ‘Stay’ is a relationship song as you can probably gather but I think it’s from the angle of people in a relationship where one person takes the other for granted a little bit. One person would explore their boundaries and take it to the nth degree, seeing how far they can go and the other party in that relationship just puts up with it and continues to love and support until finally it’s just too hard for them to do so. There’s a desire to stay but at the end of the day you just can’t – you have to move on – that’s what that song is about.
Mark: Thank you so much for taking the time and setting this up. You’ve put out a great album that everyone needs to hear, and there’s no better time to listen to great new music than the situation we find ourselves in at the minute.
Band: Thank you.
You can buy ‘The Other Side’ here:
